Daily Devotions – Hope in the Lord

Daily Devotions – Hope in the Lord

Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart: 

Lamentations 3:1-9 (ESV)

Great Is Your Faithfulness

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones; he has besieged and  enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy; though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked.

Lamentations 3:19-24 (ESV)

19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! 20 My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. 21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

As we remember Jesus being in the grave, descending to hell, etc., we believe he might have been praying a passage like this. This is a prayer for impossible causes, and it leads to marvelous words of hope in vv. 21 – 24. Remember that Jesus didn’t burst out of the grave on his own power. Like us, he had to depend on God the Father, in faith, to raise him and give him the victory